How To Engage With Your Salon Clients

Ensuring your salon is able to engage with your customers and communicate effectively is an essential part of bringing in new customers and keeping the ones you already have. This post will discuss the different methods used by salons to engage with their clients efficiently.

Hair salons are a social environment and your staff members will chat and engage with their clients when they walk through the door each day. Ensuring that the customer service of your salon is second to none and engaging with clients face to face is a wonderful strategy that will keep your customers coming back to your salon again and again. However, engaging with your customers outside of the salon through your website or social media accounts can be new territory for salon owners.

Building brand awareness and streamlining your approach to engaging with your clients will not only help you gain new clients, but ensure that they keep coming back to your salon.

Digital marketing

Digital marketing is a key element of how most salons engage with their customers. From Instagram posts with ‘in action’ shots of your staff and updates about new salon sales on your salons Facebook account – the digital realm is an excellent link to your customers.

– Social media  

With practice, posting on social media can be quick and easy, both you and most of your staff probably already have a personal social media account that you use at least semi-regularly. Setting up a professional social media presence on two or three social media platforms for your business, opens a new line of communication between you and your clients.

Engaging with your clients through social media allows you to keep a fun and creative tone. Salons are very visual places, bright colourful photographs and videos will engage customers and allow you to share the inner workings of the salon with your clients. If you encourage your staff to ask customers to follow the salon social media accounts, then you may be surprised by how quickly you gain followers.

– Social media stories 

Using social media stories is a great way to send out little daily updates to clients. They don’t stay online for long, so they are often a little more informal and playful in tone, this allows you to engage with clients in a far more conversational tone.

Stories tend to be unedited and raw, allowing the audience a quick snapshot into user’s daily life. This can allow you to get really creative in making in action stories and pictures, in this case being experimental can really interest your audience.

– SMS 

Many salons engage with customers using an SMS system. Sending an SMS message with a reminder about your clients’ salon appointments is a lot less intrusive than a phone call and far more likely to be opened. Sending through reminders about sales and offers though SMS has a very high opening rate and they can be sent out in bulk using salon software.

Sending out a short SMS to clients after their hairdressing appointment asking for short five-star review of their customer experience can help you see where you may need to improve. 

Both positive and negative reviews can give you data to work with. Engaging with clients by promptly replying to any reviews with a thank you for positive reviews and asking what your salon can do to improve the customer experience for negative reviews, lets your customers know you are listening to them and taking action based on their feedback.

– Website 

Having a well thought out website with your salon logo and an online booking function can do wonders for how you engage with clients. It is extremely important to ensure your website translates well to use on a mobile phone so customers can browse your site and book appointments on the go. Engaging with clients using a website gives you many options to explore.

Having useful links to your social media accounts on your website will encourage your customers to follow you and see what your salon has going on.

Your salon

When clients visit your salon, the salon should be a calming and enjoyable area for them to spend their time. Small touches to your customer service such as offering your clients a drink when they walk in through the door can create a better customer experience. Ensuring your salon interior and window display is fresh and appealing will help you to bring in new customers and ensure past customers keep coming back to your salon.

Interior décor is also important, small touches like indoor plants and a full length mirror for your client to look at once their hair cut is complete will create a more relaxed atmosphere that will ensure customers have an excellent time.

Discuss your products

Your staff are haircare experts – talking to your clients about what shampoos and conditioners they recommend for their hair can be an excellent opportunity for them to further engage with your customers. Your clients will have a wide variety of different hair needs, do they have colour treated hair, curly, thick or fine?

Depending on their daily life and what they want from their hair, their daily haircare routine will change.

Many clients will have selected a hair style while in the hairdressing salon and had their hair cut. However, once leaving the salon they may not have been able to achieve the same effect. Taking notes on how you styled the clients hair and why is a fantastic way of engaging with your clients.

Share ‘in action videos’ with your clients

Posting blog articles and videos regularly is a great way to engage with your clients. Videos such as ‘ten ways to style long hair for work’ with examples of practical styles such as a smooth and stylish up-do, will help clients look fabulous in between visits to your salon.

Other ideas, such as blog articles talking about the most fashionable styles of the season can be sent out every few months to customers. More personalised posts about the different types of hair dye your salon have in stock and how you would recommend your customers take care of their colour treated hair, will be sure to go down a storm.

Get involved in events within the community

Events like the local village fete and fairs can be a brilliant opportunity for your salon to develop a local network and increase customer knowledge of your salon. Offering a free hair dye, cut and dry as a raffle prize or setting up a stall selling cool hair products such as clips, straighteners and hair dryers is another great way to gain some publicity.

Offering a hair styling class at the fete and allowing passers-by to watch as you give lessons on how to create hairstyles like a fishtail braid or the perfect bun is a fantastic advertisement of your staff’s skills.

If you are interested in how SalonIQ can help you to reach your goals, please contact us here. Our staff will be delighted to discuss our salon software and how it can help your salon achieve your business goals.